After Globe and Mail union members overwhelmingly (92.3 percent) voted to reject management’s latest contract offer on Wednesday, a fence was erected around its corporate HQ in Toronto to keep reporters and editors shut-out in the event of a strike. Talks will resume on July 8.

Globe journalists withheld their bylines on Monday in protest and are reportedly making plans to publish a rival publication (if there’s a strike or lockout) rumored to carry the title Globe Nation and URL globenation.com, which redirected to the website for Unifor Local 87-M before last night's contract rejection by the union.

If there is a strike, G&M management will continue publication and will bus staff in past the fence, which has triggered a few wags to comment on paywalls and now—of course—has its own Twitter account.Continue reading...

It’s been a big week in the twitter-verse as the micro-blogger, now transmitting close to 400 million messages a day, has made three decisive moves forward.

First, Twitter announced the implementation of a two-factor authentication technology to boost security for its users after recent hacker attacks on the Financial Times, The Onion and the Associated Press accounts. The lack of added security reached a crescendo of criticism in April when a fake tweet about a non-existent White House explosion, sent from the AP account, caused havoc in US financial markets.

The two-factor authentication feature, which is voluntary for users, sends a second, one-time log-in code via text message, making it harder for hackers to break-in to an account with just a main password. Both Jeep and Burger King have been victims as well. Criticized for not putting such measures into place earlier, a Twitter rep said the rollout was delayed due to required updates to its SMS architecture. Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Apple offer it already.Continue reading...

All is a-twitter at the micro blogger as hacks continue to occur of high-profile accounts. In April, hackers broke into and tweeted from the accounts of CBS, NPR, and the Associated Press, posting messages that the US government was “in bed” with terrorists, and that there had been a (fake) explosion at the White House.

“That one bogus AP tweet caused the Dow Jones Industrial Average to drop 1 percent almost immediately, highlighting just how much people trust Twitter as a breaking news resource," VentureBeat points out.

A group called the Syrian Electronic Army took credit for the hacks, but the potential for other copycats is so great, Twitter is urging companies not to share passwords in emails or over the Internet and to limit the number of people with access to the their Twitter account. The company is even advising publishers to designate one computer exclusively for tweeting. Additionally, publications are advised to use two-factor authentication on email addresses, use strong passwords and store passwords on LastPass or 1Password.Continue reading...

On Monday, April 15 at 2:50pm, Twitter user @DeLoBarstool tweeted one of the first internet records of the Boston Marathon bombings. From that point on, social media users, citizen journalists and venerable broadcasters fell down the rabbit-hole of misinformation, spurred by an unprecedented eagerness to capture and respond to the first terrorist act on American soil since 9/11—when things like Facebook, Twitter and smartphones didn’t exist.

Over a week later, the conversation that frames the bombings and subsequent manhunt is not so much about old versus new media, but rather how the proliferation of digital and social tools have reframed the information ecosystem, resulting in an unprecedented and uneasy alliance.Continue reading...